node-basic

🚀 Basic starter code for a scalable, production-ready GraphQL server for Node.js.

Features

• Scalable GraphQL Server: graphql-yoga based on Apollo Server & Express
• GraphQL-native database: Includes GraphQL database binding to Graphcool (running on MySQL)
• Out-of-the-box support for GraphQL Playground & Tracing
• Simple data model – easy to adjust
• Preconfigured graphql-config setup

Requirements

You need to have the following things installed:

• Node 8+
• Graphcool CLI: npm i -g graphcool@beta
• GraphQL CLI: npm i -g graphql-cli
• GraphQL Playground desktop app (optional): Download

Getting started

# Bootstrap GraphQL server in directory `my-app`, based on `node-basic` boilerplate
graphql create my-app --boilerplate node-basic

# Navigate to the new project
cd my-app

# Deploy the Graphcool database
graphcool deploy

# Start server (runs on http://localhost:4000)
yarn start

# Open Playground to explore GraphQL API
yarn playground

Alternative: Clone repo

# Clone the repo and navigate into project directory
git clone https://github.com/graphql-boilerplates/node-graphql-server.git
cd node-graphql-server/basic

# Deploy the Graphcool database
graphcool deploy

# Install node dependencies
yarn install

# Start server (runs on http://localhost:4000)
yarn start

# Open Playground to explore GraphQL API
yarn playground

Docs

Commands

• yarn start starts GraphQL server
• yarn playground opens the GraphQL Playground
• yarn deploy deploys GraphQL server to now

Project structure

/ (root directory)

• .graphqlconfig.yml GraphQL configuration file containing the endpoints and schema configuration. Used by the graphql-cli and the GraphQL Playground. See graphql-config for more information.
• graphcool.yml: The root configuration file for your database service (documentation).

/database

• database/datamodel.graphql contains the data model that you define for the project (written in SDL).
• database/schema.generated.graphql defines the database schema. It contains the definition of the CRUD API for the types in your data model and is generated based on your datamodel.graphql. You should never edit this file manually, but introduce changes only by altering datamodel.graphql and run graphcool deploy.

/src

• src/schema.graphql defines your application schema. It contains the GraphQL API that you want to expose to your client applications.
• src/index.js is the entry point of your server, pulling everything together and starting the GraphQLServer from graphql-yoga.

Common questions

I'm getting a 'Schema could not be fetched.' error after deploying, what gives?

Access to the Graphcool API is secured by a secret. This also applies to the introspection query. Using the latest version of GraphQL Playground, the Authorization header should automatically be setup with a proper JWT signing the secret. If that's not the case, you can follow these steps to access your API:

1. Visit http://jwtbuilder.jamiekurtz.com/
2. Replace the Key at the bottom of the page with your secret from the graphcool.yml
3. Click Create signed JWT and copy the obtained token
4. Now, to access the schema, use the Authorization: Bearer <token> header, or in the GraphQL Playground set it as JSON:

   {
     "Authorization": "Bearer <token>"
   }

5. Reload the schema in the Playground (the refresh-button is located right next to the URL of the server)

Note: Currently, no content of the signed JWT is verified by the database! This will be implemented according to this proposal at a later stage.

Contributing

Your feedback is very helpful, please share your opinion and thoughts! If you have any questions, join the #graphql-boilerplate channel on our Slack.